Hey, I'm DJ (Daniel Johnson) and I'm a designer, coder and and all round important person. You may remember my face from a Colgate advert that ran in Kanvas in September 1996, or maybe you are here for my weekly tech updates.. Either way... Say Hello!

Month: January 2015

Everyone dreams of doing what they love for a living. Although there are a few people who would rather save their hobbies for their spare time, some enjoy their favorite activities so much that they want to do them all the time. One of the most coveted professions is that of a professional video game player. There are boys, girls, men and women around the world who would kill to spend their days playing, analyzing and reviewing games. But, of course, it isn’t the sort of job that just anyone can walk into. There aren’t a great deal of employment opportunities in the industry, compared to other sectors. Although the gaming industry is one that’s flourishing, most roles don’t involve playing games all the time. But if you work hard and get good at what you do, you could become one of the lucky people who gets paid to do what they love.

Have a Backup Plan

First of all, don’t set all your hopes on making it big in the gaming industry. There’s nothing wrong with going after what you want, but you don’t want to end up destitute if it doesn’t work out. It’s not defeatist to do some other work while you try to get into the business; it’s just a realistic thing to do. Work on your gaming in your spare time and gradually move into playing games for a living. Just like any kind of self-employment, it’s best to ease into it when you’re beginning to earn enough to support yourself.

Become a Great Player

It’s not enough to just enjoy playing a game and think that you’re pretty good at it. You need to be prepared to spend an entire working day of seven or eight hours plugging away to get better and better. If you want to be a top player, you need to be prepared to work on your game, just like you would have to with any other craft or skill. Professional players have rigorous practice schedules to keep their skills honed, so you need to have the discipline to really work at getting better. Of course, most people who want to play games professionally are probably happy to sit and play all day for weeks on end. But remember that you’re not looking to play casually and just for fun.

Know Your Stuff

Your practical gaming skills aren’t the only thing that’s important to making it in the business. You need to do your research, so you know more about the wider industry and the professional gamers who have come before you. As well as knowing about the platform(s) you use to play and your preferred games, you can study other gamers. By watching their tactics and behavior, you can learn some new skills that will help you start playing like a professional instead of an amateur. Spend time working on things that you know you need to improve and keep honed, and use games that will help you target particular aspects of your gameplay. Each game has a specific set of rules and tests of skill in Major League Gaming, so you need to learn them for your preferred game.

Get Involved with the Community

Whether you play on an XBOX One, a PlayStation 4 or another platform, and no matter what genre you like, there is a community you need to be part of. If you want to participate in tournaments and improve your playing, you need to associate with other people. Playing alone will cause you to miss out on lots of great advice and support. There are several ways you can get involved with the community, from joining an online forum to forming your own team. Discussing strategies and other elements of gaming forms an important part of your professional development.

Build the Right Setup

You don’t have to have all the most sophisticated equipment to become a great player, and owning it won’t make you any better either. But creating a gaming setup that makes things easier for you will help you improve your skills, without poorly performing equipment getting in your way. You’re obviously limited by your budget, but there are plenty of ways you can set up your system to give you an extra edge. It could be ordering a custom-built laptop from chillblast.com, buying a gaming chair that makes you more comfortable or even just getting a new controller.

Forming a Team

When you want to start participating in tournaments, forming a team is your next step. You might already have some fellow gamers to build a professional team with or you might be completely on your own. Thanks to online gaming, you can find people to play with over the internet and communicate from wherever you want. You can use the Major League Gaming recruitment forum, which will help you find people to join tournaments with, whether you’re alone or already have a couple of members. You might have done plenty of practice on your own, but once you have a team you need to learn to work together. You can practice against other teams before you enter any official tournaments. Then you can start to enter online competitions to begin to prove your skill.

Playing on the Pro Circuit

After you’ve had lots of experience entering online tournaments, it’s time to move on to the Pro Circuit competitions, run by Major League Gaming. You need to attend live events to cement your position in the community, even if you perform very well online. Some live events get a great deal of attention, and a win at one could get you money and fame. A few of the top-performing professional gamers take in six-figure earnings, but it’s tough competition. People from all over the world participate in tournaments, so you need to be the best of the best. If you can prove that you are, you could be one of the lucky few that makes it big.

Gaming is a pastime most of us enjoy whether we are young or old. Some of us even got into coding and programming after our childhoods were spent playing on the old consoles and early computers. Now the internet is up to full strength and other technologies have caught up, there are games everywhere. Our TVs, tabs, phones and FaceBook accounts provide endless gaming opportunities. While the big consoles like XBox, Playstation and Wii still dominate, most games are now online and can be played interactively live with people around the world.

This internet gaming community has brought people together from all over the globe to talk about gaming passions. There is never a dull moment in any game, and you have the opportunity to meet people you would never have dreamed of talking to. Gaming is so important to so many cultures, and most of us have some very good friends we only see in virtual environments. Most importantly, these forms of social relationships are now considered the norm. Previously, we were all nerds, weirdos, and geeks, but now there has been a complete 180 turn. Now those who don’t have friends online or friends they communicate with online are considered odd and out of touch.

Gaming is more than a passion for us though. It has become part of our daily routine. We may game on our commute, or in our lunch break. Even at the breakfast table the phone may come out for a quick game. When you are checking the posts on FaceBook, you may have a quick go at that little game your friend posted about last week. If you are coding or you are writing game apps, you may even be lucky enough to design one that goes viral. Everybody will be talking about your game, at least for a week or two anyway!

With so many games available, getting to the viral stage does seem to be harder and harder. There may be a very simple reason. Think back to the nineties (perhaps impossible for some of you). The nineties saw one game character stand out head and prickles above the rest. Sonic the Hedgehog really was born that long ago, but all the merchandise that comes with his popularity is still going strong. Sonic the Hedgehog collectibles are even starting to make money on their original investment. Before you next have a house clearance, carefully package up anything ornaments or collectibles you may have!

Buying and selling gaming memorabilia or collectibles are still a way to earn a little cash out of your passion for gaming. Most of us have refused to give up our first consoles even though we haven’t used them yet this century. We all know they will be worth something again one day to the right collector. Either that or we will just have to pull out that Street Fighter II game once more! It won’t matter how many versions of Super Mario Kart come out, the original on the SNES will always be cherished forever.

The internet will never run out of good games to keep us entertained, puzzled and fully armed ready for zombie attacks. And it seems unlikely that, as a games platform, it will ever end up in the back of someone’s closet waiting to make a comeback. The internet and all that is good about gaming will be here forever, long after our phones have been replaced, and tabs have become wearable. If you ever needed a reason to learn how to code, this enormous industry of the profit-hungry and the generous to a fault game programmers must surely be it.

The tools of the trade are simple. A Mac will do, and a love for all things gaming. You may need a bit of creativity and focused mind for debugging, but a will to learn, and the time to try are all that should be required. Not everyone makes a living, but some get so rich they don’t know what to do with it all. It is certainly a mixed bag. However, if in twenty something years a grown man is holding a collectible figurine of a character you designed, you’ll know it was all worth it.

All financial estimates about the gaming industry are pointing toward it being worth $100 billion before this decade is out. It is growing, and it will continue to grow, so plenty of room for you all to hop on board this train. Collectibles will continue to increase in value too as the gaming industry becomes more and more important and financially enormous. It only takes one character to make you rich, provided it is sold and marketed in the right way. Think about the Mario or Lara Croft from way back when.

So what makes a good character great? It isn’t all about good looking graphics or a comprehensive backstory. Just the playability and the likeability of the character and what they get up to. Some are about the sound, some are about the graphics, but all of them are about being able to progress through the game. Make it too easy, and it lacks durability. Make it too hard, and you lose the casual gamer. Finding the balance, and some intelligent challenges are key.

Humor is also essential. Think about Minion Rush. People are spending hundreds of dollars to buy the funniest minions and use them in the gameplay. The gamers are not designing the characters or asking they be made bespoke. They are liking what is being offered because the choice of character is wide and varied, completely hilarious and enjoyable even for those just watching the gameplay. Yes, the spectacle of the gameplay is important, and some sort of objective or point to the gameplay is crucial. But so long as it is about having fun, there is every chance it will be successful. Take your time to design your character and all its characteristics, and then all that is left to do is produce the collectibles!

New Jersey-based players have had a full year to reflect on ground-breaking legislation that now permits them to play online casino games for real money. In November 2013, Governor Christie endorsed legislation to permit legal age players in New Jersey to enjoy online casino games for real money. This is significant since it rewrites the gaming culture in the state, and quite possibly the US as a whole. Players across the US were badly burned when the notorious Black Friday of 2011 stripped the country of top online poker rooms like PokerStars, Party Poker and FullTilt Poker. According to the terms of the UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act), US banks and financial institutions are barred from transferring money to/from online casinos, online poker rooms and betting sites. The legislation is complex, but in its simplest form online gaming is not permitted at federal level. Individual states have taken it upon themselves to legislate this issue and progress is certainly being made. Presently, New Jersey, Delaware and Nevada have authorized online gaming in varying degrees. New Jersey offers the full spectrum of casino games to all players aged 21 and above.

New Jersey Department of Gambling Enforcement (DGE)

Image courtesy of patrisyu and freedigitalphotos.net

The framework for online gambling legislation in the Garden State falls under the purview of the DGE. In November 2013 all licensed land-based casinos with their online casino partners officially went live with a selection of online casino games for players across New Jersey. Sophisticated gaming technology was put into place to ensure that only New Jersey residents or visitors had access to real money casino games. This is verified by way of geolocation tracking technology which triangulates a player’s position. The issue was highly contentious in heavily populated border areas like Pennsylvania, Delaware and New York. In its infancy stages, the geolocation tracking technology was inaccurate and falsely included residents of other states, while sometimes excluding New Jersey residents from playing real money casino games. Players have to verify their identities with government issued ID/drivers licenses, or passports and Social Security cards.

CaesarsCasino.com Leading from the Front in New Jersey

There are several leading online casinos operating in New Jersey, with Caesars Online Casino at the helm. As Atlantic City’s premier land-based casino, Caesars Casino Atlantic City partnered with Caesars Interactive Entertainment to roll out Caesars Online Casino. This prestigious gaming operator features the full gamut of casino games, including slots online, roulette online, online blackjack, video poker games online and jackpot games. Top titles include Jacks or Better, European Roulette, Vegas Blackjack, Street Fighter II, King Kong and Star Trek. Online casino USA initiatives have certainly gained tremendous momentum from the success of the online gaming industry in New Jersey. As a result, Pennsylvania and California are now seriously considering introducing bills to allow online gaming in their jurisdictions too.

Most people know that they cannot operate their mobile phones and smartphones without a SIM card inside of them. These small chips come in a few different shapes and sizes. To the layman, they seem to have embedded data that allows us to connect to our host networks.

But, have you ever wondered why we need to use SIM cards in our cell phones? And just what are they, apart from being gold-colored chips? Today’s article gives you an insight into how something so small helps us communicate with the world around us.

How do cell phones work?

Some of you will know that mobile phones work over radio waves. They “talk” to radio masts in your local area. In fact, there are thousands of these masts all over the country. As you travel from one “cell” area to another, you don’t lose signal as long as you’re in a zone with a transmitter.

In essence, it works in a similar way to the radio in your car. Does your local radio station send transmissions over a large area? If so, the signal it sends out gets fed through several regional transmitters.

Except with cell phones, your handset can send data as well. That data could be your voice in a phone conversation. It could be a text message. Or it could even be “packet” data when you use your smartphone’s web browser, for example.

Why are SIM cards needed?

With me so far? Good! Now, we know that many cell phones need a small chip called a SIM card to work. But, have you ever wondered why some mobiles don’t need a SIM card? The answer is down to the type of network they use.

GSM networks, which power many of the world’s cell phone networks, need a SIM card. CDMA networks, like those utilized in the United States, don’t usually need one. Now, you might be wondering why we need SIM cards at all. After all, can’t we all just use CDMA networks?

With SIM cards, you can use any device to connect to the network as long as the device works with that network. Some people use “unlocked” phones for this purpose. That means you can change your mobile phone to a newer model and still use the same SIM card with it.

That’s a problem with CDMA networks because you’re restricted to the one phone.

Who makes these SIM cards?

Some people assume that the mobile networks themselves make the SIM cards. In fact, other companies manufacture the SIM cards for them! For example, Workz SIM card manufacturers provide the cards for Middle-Eastern network operators.

What happens if we lose our SIM cards?

The good thing about SIM cards is that they can get replaced. If your phone gets lost or stolen, the mobile network can deactivate the old SIM card and activate your subscriber details on a new one.

And because mobile networks have such a high stock of SIM cards, you will usually not get charged for a replacement.

Most people don’t give a second thought to the keyboards they use with their computer systems. Some of them feel “cheap” and “plasticky.” While others have a soft, satisfying touch.

Modern computer systems don’t come with keyboards that offer much in the way of feedback these days. Old-school PC users might remember hardware built by IBM. And, to be precise, the IBM Model M keyboard.

I realize that I’m starting to show my age now! But I remember using that same model of keyboard when I first started using computers. Fast forward to the 21st century. I had (wrongly) assumed that such mechanical keyboards were no longer “in fashion” in the computer world.

As it turns out, there is a strong following of users that prefer the tactile touch of mechanical keyboards. Of course, not everyone wants to use a keyboard that doesn’t have a “Windows” keyboard button on it.

Nor do they want to use one with a PS/2 or Serial connector on it. These days, it’s all about USB connectivity, don’t you know!

Are you are considering getting a new keyboard for your home or office PC? If so, should you make the switch from mainstream to mechanical? Today’s blog post will help you to find out the answer to that question.

So… Just what is a mechanical keyboard?

If you’ve never had the pleasure of using an IBM Model M keyboard before, you might not know just what is a mechanical keyboard.

In a nutshell, today’s mainstream keyboards have rubber “domes” underneath each key. They work in tandem with plastic membranes. They are cheap to produce and buy, and they are spill-resistant.

Mechanical keyboards use physical switches to determine which keys got pressed. Each key uses a plastic base, spring, and a stem. They produce that familiar “clicking” sound with every key press.

Are mechanical keyboards getting popular?

In a word, yes. For example, go to the Google website and search for “Mechanical Keyboards UK.” You will find a plethora of companies advertising and selling such devices.

Many consumers are getting bored with the lackluster choice of keyboards on the market these days. It seems there is a trend for getting “back to basics” due to the growing amounts of people buying mechanical keyboards.

Who uses mechanical keyboards?

It might surprise you to learn that the biggest users of mechanical keyboards are the gaming community! And, as you might expect, such keyboards are available in a range of colors and styles.

Scores of gamers prefer the “retro” feel of mechanical keyboards. And there is also another practical reason this group of people is making the switch. PC-based games often use keyboard shortcuts.

Sometimes it is hard to know when a key get pressed mid-play as gamers seldom take their eyes off the display in front of them!

What are the downsides to mechanical keyboards?

If you need a keyboard that gets used for plenty of typing work each day, mechanical keyboards are the wrong choice for you! They make an audible clicking sound. If you touch-type with such a device, it can sound like you’re using a typewriter!